Biennale

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We woke this morning to a cold steady rain. The high was in the upper 50s and there was no way to avoid walking in puddles...lots of big puddles. We were cold and wet before we even met our guide. There was some miscommunication and we ended up waiting for one another in different places. While Cristina came to meet us we found an outside table under an awning with a heater, cappuccino and a croissant. Since we were at the foot of the Rialto bridge, everything was twice what we were used to paying, but the croissant was head and shoulders better than what we'd been eating.

We decided that we wanted to focus on the Biennale. It turns out that in addition to two large central locations, there are exhibits scattered all over the city. The most prominent banners throughout Venice were for the Azerbaijan exhibit, "The Union of Fire and Water" and on Cristina's recommendation we headed there first. The exhibit was housed in a private villa originally owned by a Venetian ambassador who travelled extensively to Azerbaijani cities and is now owned by the Curtis family. It is generally closed to the public. Azerbaijan is an extremely wealthy country with huge oil reserves where the economy is controlled by 15 families. The location of the exhibit, the promotion of the exhibit and the exhibit itself were all designed to demonstrate the country's wealth. Here's the story. Historically, there were strong ties between Venice and Baku. A wealthy man built a Venetian villa for his bride in Baku. When the Russians invaded the man sent his wife back to Europe and committed suicide as the Russians entered his palazzo. The building still stands and is now used for weddings, a fitting way to honor a tragic romance. Cristina described the Biennale as focused on memory as opposed to looking toward the future. Certainly this installation with a wonderfully produced video blended today and the past.

Our next stop was the China exhibit. It showed religion being threatened by bloody wolves (modernity?). Actually, in today's world religion is itself a threat to modernity.

After this we slogged our way to a vaporetto to one of the two major sites. At the Giardini, our first stop was the Swatch exhibit that was a maze like path among beautiful flowers informed one of the three major themes of the Biennale, Garden of Disorder. The site had numerous buildings, a main building where the exhibits are curated by a single individual, this year it is Okwui Enwezor. Surrounding this building as pavilions owned by various countries in which they mount their own exhibit every two years. There were several wonderful works in the main building and I was able to appreciate what I was seeing thanks to Cristina who knew the backgrounds of the artists.

"The Western Wall or the Wailing Wall" had been displayed in the 1993 Biennale and is being re displayed. I've attached the artist's statement since it is considered part of the work. In an empty auditorium, actors read from Karl Marx or other political tracts.

Here's a run down of the country exhibits.

USA - videos produced by a woman affiliated with MIT that were completely baffling. When I told Jack that I couldn't make heads or tails of what I was seeing, he suggested that he focus on the heads and I'd focus on the tails and then it might make sense....it didn't.

Israel - The theme was archeology, with exhibits of found contemporary objects. I got it but in the words of Jim Stone, art is anything you can get away with, "aiaycgaw".

France - aiaycgaw

Great Britain - aiaycgaw

Germany - 100% political focused on refugees living in Germany, but I couldn't find anything that struck me as art.

Korea - science fiction videos that were fun to watch

Japan - great...part one was a set of videos in which toddlers talked about their birth. The best was a little boy who explained he came out headfirst and so fast that the first thing he said was "varoom". It would have been impossible not to love it. The larger part of the exhibit was beautiful.

While there were numerous other country pavilions we were too wet and cold to want to do anything other than get warm. The vaporetto heading back revived us sufficiently to make another stop at San Grigorio church. The were half a dozen small exhibits and several were excellent. Jack loved photographing the wire head in the main chapel. We both loved the installation piece comprised of figures of burlap that reminded us of the terra cotta soldiers. These figures were anonymous some without heads or arms while the solders had been created so that each soldier was unique, but in fact equally anonymous.

I left with a much greater appreciation for installation art than before.

Dinner was at a small, traditional restaurant near our apartment. Where the other two dinners were at stylish, modern restaurants this restaurant looked exactly like my image of an Italian bistro. I had gnocchi with artichokes and smoked mozzarella for $11, that was delicious and we split a homemade panacotta that we almost came to blows over who was eating too much of the caramel sauce.

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